The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

Hello all you beautiful readers! This is just a quick word to say thanks for your patience, thanks for all your congratulations and an especially big thank you for all your kind words and wishes for the wee Mump-stricken Mini Mouse (it actually turned out to not be mumps, just a viral infection so that was a relief). Anyway, at long last here is the Tintin review.

***

The popularity of Tintin fascinates me like a Victorian lady of mysterious background.

I don’t mean that I’m surprised that the Tintin books are so stupendously popular across the civilized world.

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“The devil you say?”

That’s just a case of the market rewarding good product. Hergé’s Tintin books are visually appealing, well-told adventures with humour that translates very well across cultures. It’s not surprising that they sell well. I mean the popularity of the character Tintin himself fascinates me, because he shouldn’t work as a protagonist. In my Asterixreview I called Tintin “one of the most generic characters in all of fiction” and I stand by that. He doesn’t have a single defining trait that you can really hang your hat on. He has the traits a character needs to get reliably in and out of adventures; curiousity, bravery, quick wits and a willingness to help others, and that’s about it. He’s just Adventure Hero in its most pure and undiluted form with no distinct personality or identifying traits. And lest you think I consider him “generic” because he’s a white male, consider that he’s not even all that white or all that male. Although nominally Belgian, if I hadn’t mentioned it would you even know he was? Does he come across as particularly Belgian?

Other than that time he cut a bloody swathe across the Congo, I mean?

Nor is he particularly “male”. You could swap out Tintin for a female character and her dialogue and actions wouldn’t seem jarringly out of place. And then there’s that matter of his orientation. Despite all the fandom speculation about his relationship with Captain Haddock, I’d argue that there’s more textual evidence for Tintin being asexual, (of course, these were originally comics for children published in a conservative Catholic magazine so it’s not like you’d expect to see much of the hard fucking, regardless). Tintin is almost defiantly featureless. Even as a hero he’s distinctly middle-of-the-road. He’s a capable fighter, but he’s no Batman. An able detective, but hardly a Holmes. He’s a crack shot, but he uses a gun so infrequently you might read several books and never know. And then there’s his personal history. Who are his parents? Does he have any siblings? What paper does he, supposedly a journalist, work for?

“You ask a lot of questions, Mouse. People who ask questions often come to sticky ends, I hear.”

And it’s not like Hergé was just bad at characterisation, the stories are filled with memorable and distinct oddballs. So what gives? Why does Tintin have such appeal?

I have a theory. Do you know which character Tintin actually reminds me of more than any other?

I’d argue that Tintin, like Mario, is less a character in the conventional sense and more like a player avatar, a figure who provides an entry point into the story for the reader and is non-descript enough to allow them to be fully immersed in the adventure. I wouldn’t have thought it would work, but then I’m not the guy who’s sold 200 million copies worldwide so what do I know?

“Jacques merde, monsieur.”

Mais oui. Anyway, 200 million Tintin books have been sold worldwide and they’ve been read by people all over the globe, including five or six Americans. One of those Americans was Stephen Spielberg who first became aware of the series when reviews of Raiders of the Lost Ark kept comparing Indy to Tintin.

Hergé, luckily enough, was a big Spielberg fan and after his death his widow agreed to give Spielberg the movie rights. A live action version of Tintin went into pre-production in the early eighties, with Jack Nicholson being considered for Captain Haddock. Because it was Hollywood in the eighties and cocaine is a hell of a drug.

That version never got traction and the rights bounced back between Spielberg and the Hergé estate for a few decades until finally Spielberg committed to a CGI motion-capture film with effects work provided by Peter Jackson’s WETA workshop.

The movie finally came out in 2011. Got great reviews. Did excellent box office. And then…

That was kinda it. Call it the Avatar effect, where a movie manages to be a huge success while leaving next to no mark of the cultural landscape. Spielberg’s been talking about completing the trilogy but it’s been eight years now and I don’t think there’s any real interest or appetite for it. Call it the Avatar effect.

“You already used that.”

“It can be two things!”

The movie begins in Brussels where intrepid young reporter William Chuzzleforth Tintin is sitting for a portrait with a street artist who bears an uncanny resemblance to Hergé. The artist reveals the painting which is, naturally enough, Tintin drawn in the Hergé style.

“Monsieur approves?”“Monsieur cannot believe that took two hours and would like his money back.”

Tintin’s dog, Snowy, sees a suspicious man slinking around the town square and filching valuables from the local citizenry like a common sneak thief harrumph harrumph. So now’s a good time to talk about the animation. Regular readers of this blog will know that photo-realistic CGI humans are at the top of my list of things that terrify the bejesus out of me so you will not be surprised at all to hear me say that I absolutely love this animation.

Don’t ask me how they did it. It’s photo realistic humans sculpted in flesh to look like Herge’s character designs and that should be unutterably hideous but for some reason it isn’t.

Witchcraft was presumably involved.

Anyway, before Snowy can crack this case wide open, he’s found by Tintin who spots a beautiful model ship being sold by a local vendor and decides to buy it. The ship is a Restoration-Era British man of war named the Unicorn and Tintin is instantly smitten with it. This is what kicks off our whole movie and there is a pleasing simplicity to it. Tintin just wants that ship. He doesn’t have some kind of history with it, his dad wasn’t lost at sea fighting Portuguese men o’war, he just thinks the ship looks really cool and he wants it. He’s not a terribly deep individual, our Tintin. He buys the ship just as another man, an American, arrives to buy it. They American, a schlubby guy who looks so nervous you’d think his grandmother was going through his search history, offers to pay two pound for the ship, which is a lot of money in Britain, where this movie is not set. Tintin refuses and the American tells him that he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into and that he’s messing with some serious people. And Tintin’s all “I’m part of the model ship collecting scene, you think this is the first time someone’s tried to kill me? This is the life I chose.”

No sooner has that guy shuffled off when another, far more villainous looking individual named Sakharine shows up and offers to buy the ship from Tintin. But Tintin tells him that it’s his ship and that it’s not for sale. Sakharine tells him that he’s recently bought Marlinspike Hall, which was owned by the Haddock family, whose ancestor Sir Francis Haddock captained the Unicorn, the very ship Tintin is now holding (people were a lot shorter back then). Sakharine insists that this means Tintin should give him the ship for…reasons but Tintin is none too impressed and bids Sakharine a very good day to you sir, indeed.

And I’m sure that’ll be that.

Tintin returns home and puts the the ship in pride of place in his living room, right where it can be seen when he has girls over.

But when a cat breaks into the apartment, Snowy chases it until he knocks over the ship model, breaking one of the masts. Unseen by Tintin, a small metal cylinder falls out of the broken mast and rolls under the dresser. Tintin is intrigued by Sakharine’s hints of the Unicorn’s history and decides to go to the place more filled with adventure than any other.

I swear, if this guy was any more square you could cut yourself on his corners. At the library he learns that before he died, Sir Francis hinted that there was a secret to the model ship, but that only a “true Haddock” could decipher it.

“I know. But I ain’t sayin’ nuffin.”

Tintin returns home to find that the model ship has been stolen and he heads straight for Marlinspike Hall. Because you steal from Tintin, he doesn’t call the police. He’ll break into your home, take back what’s his and kill you and your entire family. Wait. Just the first two. Inside the mansion he finds the ship but gets knocked unconscious by Sakharine’s butler, Nestor. When he wakes up, Sakharine (not unreasonably) wants to know what the hell, brah. Tintin angrily accuses Sakharine of stealing his toy ship but when he gets a closer look at it he realises that the mast isn’t broken and that Sakharine’s model is not his. Turns out there are three of the darn things, and Sakharine already has one. Tintin is pretty embarassed about the whole “breaking and entering” business, but quickly pivots to asking why Sir Francis had three model ships, and why Sakaharin is trying to collect them. Sakharine tells him that he’s asking a lot of questions and that people who ask questions often come to sticky ends, he hears, and has Nestor show Tintin the way out. Nestor, who clearly does not like Sakharine, hints to Tintin that he should make sure he found “all the pieces” from his broken ship, wink wink.

Back at his flat, Tintin finds that the place has been turned over and ransacked. He finds the metal cylinder though, which contains a scroll of paper. Suddenly, the American from before shows up at his door and gets riddled with bullets. Tintin chases after the attackers and in the confusion Tintin falls prey to the pickpocket that Snowy saw before in the market square who steals his wallet with the piece of parchment inside. Tintin and Snowy then get kidnapped by some uncouth sailors and is taken aboard a ship called the Karaboudjan. He escapes from the hold and finds himself in the cabin of the captain, Archibald Haddock, whose crew have taken over the ship and have kept him locked in his cabin and kept him under sedated with sweet, sweet booze.

So Captain Haddock is probably the most popular character in the whole Tintin franchise, to the point where the later books have him as the main character in all but name.

I wish I liked Andy Serkis’ performance as Haddock more, I really do. He’s not doing anything wrong, but I was reared on the Tintin animated series and David Fox will always be my Haddock. The Scottish accent Serkis gives Haddock is just jarring to me. Speaking of being “jarred”, Haddock is unable to answer any of Tintin’s questions about Sir Francis’ secret legacy because he’s been conducting a decades-long scientific inquiry into the effects of replacing all fluid in a human body with whiskey. Tintin and Haddock escape the Karaboudjan in a life boat and after a long series of adventure set-pieces faithfully recreated from the comics, they find themselves wandering through a Moroccan desert 300 miles from anything in a liquid state. This causes Haddock come down with a crippling case of sobriety and he suddenly remembers the story of how his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock, fought a naval battle against a notorious pirate named Red Rackham.

This scene is where I think the movie’s choice of CGI mo-cap really pays off; it’s hands down the most thrilling naval battle I’ve ever seen on film. If it was in traditional animation, it wouldn’t have the same impact, and if it was in live action it would be flat out impossible, as sailors and pirates go flinging from mast to mast amid impossibly vast churning waves. But the CGI is so good and tactile and weighty that you can almost believe that what you’re watching is real. My only quibble is that the whole thing is a flashback with only distant impact on the actual main story. Haddock relates the tale but then collapses due to the effect of being drier than a lesbian at a Magic Mike screening.

The pair are rescued by the French Foreign legion and Tintin implores Haddock to finish the story but unfortunately sobriety has caused him to forget everything and yeah, I’ve heard that excuse. Snowy fixes the problem by swapping Haddock’s water with medicinal alcohol, thus causing the poor Captain to fall off the wagon so hard he leaves a dent in the Oregon trail. But, then, Snowy is a wire fox terrier so you’d expect that.

The breed is typically friendly, intelligent and a complete fucking enabler.

After going on a drunken, halluncinatory rampage through a barracks filled with some of the most badass soldiers in the history of warfare and somehow not getting a bayonet through every orifice on his body, Haddock recalls that the Unicorn was captured by Red Rackham and all of her crew put to death with the exception of Francis Haddock. Haddock was forced to reveal the Unicorn’s secret cargo, a treasure big enough to give Scrooge McDuck a priapism.

Francis Haddock escaped, set fire to the Unicorn’s magazine and blew the ship, the treasure and Red Rackham to Davy Jones’ locker.

Don’t let his boyish good looks fool you, he feeds on the blood of sailors.

Also, while flashbacking, Haddock realises that Red Rackham was identical to Sakharine, and that Sakharine is out for vengeance for something that happened to his ancestor three hundred years before he was born, like any of us would in that situation. So Tintin and Haddock finally figure out what’s going on; Francis left clues to the location of the sunken treasure of the Unicorn in the three model ships, Sakharine wants to get to it before Haddock, Haddock wants to get to it before Sakharine. Game on.

They follow Sakharine to Bagghar, a port town in Morocco where the final Unicorn model is being kept behind unbreakable glass by the local sultan. To break the glass, Sakharine has arranged for the famed opera singer Bianca Castafiore to sing for the sultan, knowing that the power of her voice will shatter the glass and allow him to steal the ship. Damn Sakharine, where did you learn to come up with such logical and unconvuluted plans?

“I used to design point and click adventure games in the nineties.”

In Bagghar, Tintin meets up with Thomson and Thompson, two police officers and friends of his. They succeeded in capturing the pickpocket from before and, on finding Tintin’s wallet in his possessions, travelled all the way to Morocco to return it to him because the Belgian police take their job seriously, damn it. Unfortunately, not only does Sakharine manage to get the scroll from the sultan’s ship, his men also manage to mug Haddock and get Tintin’s scroll too, meaning Sakharine now has all the clues he needs to find Rackham’s treasure. Tintin and Haddock chase after Sakharine and also try to blow him up with a GODDAMN BAZOOKA.

“Tintin don’t fucking play.”

This leads to an absolutely fantastic chase scene that I just have to share with you.

It’s just a congo line of great action, sight gags and set pieces just building and building until it builds to a sublime crescendo of perfectly constructed chaos. Sakharine threatens to drown Haddock and Snowy if Tintin doesn’t give him the three scrolls and Tintin…seems disturbingly okay with that. Then again Tintin probably knows that alcohol is less dense than water so Haddock’s chances of drowning are virtually nil. Anyway, Sakharine gets all three scrolls and vamooses.

Sakharine returns home to Belgium (?) but finds Thompson, Thomson, Tintin and Haddock waiting for him as they were able to track the Karaboudjan by tracking the ship’s radio frequencies.

“Like putting too much air in a balloon!”

At the dock, Haddock and Sakharine finally settle this in the traditional maritime style; with a good old fashioned crane fight. Haddock finally defeats Sakharine. With the three scrolls recovered, they follow the clues which lead them right back to Marlinspike manor where Nestor the Butler welcomes Captain Haddock back to his ancestral home. They find some of the treasure and another clue as to the location of the sunken Unicorn and the rest of the treasure, all waiting for them in that sequel which will be released any day now.

***

Tintin barely puts a foot wrong and I can’t point to a single element in it that doesn’t work. But at the same time I can’t say I love it. It’s perfectly competent, enjoyable fare but it just doesn’t set my loins ablaze. I feel about this the same way that I think the vast majority of people did when they first saw it on it’s release:

Good film. Enjoyed it. Never need to see it again.

Scoring:

Animation 17/20: Turns out this motion capture CGI malarkey can actually work and all it takes is the presence of American cinema’s greatest living director.

Leads 15/20: Jamie Bell embodies Tintin to a scarily accurate degree. I don’t know how he got him to sound exactly the same as how he sounds in my head, and suspect he may be reading my thoughts.

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49 comments

Sorry to be late for the well wishes on Mini Mouse. I have been… busy of late, to put it in some manner of terms. Good to hear it’s not so bad after all.

Are you, or any of the fellow commenters around, familiar with Spirou, I wonder? From my limited knowledge of him he’s basically just ‘Tintin in a bellboy outfit’, and yet what I have seen of his background and supporting cast strikes me as more diverse and colorful than Tintin’s, Haddock aside, and that’s just because none can top Haddock.

I read and enjoyed Z is for Zorglub (though I didn’t like the reveal that Zorglub stole most of his gadgets) and I saw a cartoon or two featuring the Marsupilami, but I’m not that familiar with the series.

So, competent if not necessarily standout? Come to think of it, there are a lot of CGI cartoons like that these days.

Also, having read just The Calculus Affair, I must say that for a comic strip focusing on a journalist, there is a lot more WWII-surplus hardware than I’d been initially led to expect. (The Schmeisser I can understand, but where in the world did the baddies get a /tank/?)

I definitely enjoyed this movie, but, like you said, it doesn’t really leave me wanting more. Also I don’t care how well it’s done, this type of animation doesn’t sit right with me. This is probably the best it’s ever looked and I still get weirded out by it.

Ooh, looking forward to Twenty Thousand Leagues. I have vaguely fond memories or an old VHS copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues.

Man, I need to get around to watching this, but I’m not clear if I ever will. This thing puts out an aura that feels like anti-advertising and I don’t know why that is.

Same with the comics. I know they’re classics, and I keep swearing I’ll check them out, but somehow my Yankee self keeps neglecting to check out them furreign funny books.

I guess maybe the Tintin books (or Uncle Scrooge, for that matter) don’t have the same clout in America as Europe because we Americans are programmed to see the stereotypical action lead as some grizzled badass, and we have trouble seeing daring-do in a pantsless cartoon duck or a guy who looks like Caillou’s big brother.

Ooh, mid-50s live-action Disney, back when their live action department had passion, creativity, and talent! (Or so I’ve heard. They basically never play them anymore, so I’m going off of other people’s judgment.) Looking forward to it.

You apparently don’t know that Scrooge McDuck and the duck comics used to be popular in US in the 50s, the best comic artist was from US too. And check out Don Rosa’s Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is you want badass. But in Europe most of the time the comics are about comedy as much as action and the characters need to be likable not “badass”.

I remember getting excited about a movie version but then getting turned off by the CGI. Guess I should probably check it out . . . but I too grew up with “The Adventures of Tintin” and have those voices pretty much ingrained into my mind.

As one of the other five Americans who has read the Tintin books, I quite enjoyed this movie. I have to agree about Haddock’s voice though, the animated series was on HBO over here, and I grew up with it as my definitive version.

This movie had great action though, especially the plane scene, the ship battle, and that chase that levels an entire town (but there’s treasure to find, and it was, y’know, foreign so Tintin don’t care). I can’t say I prefer it to the books, which are more…cozy? Even though people get shot and Tintin gets an average of like three concussions a story (dude’s brain is basically pâté at this point), they never felt too high-stakes and adrenaline-feuled. The movie is the comics on steroids.

Wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel, but like you said, the world doesn’t seem to be waiting with bated breath for one. Oh well, glad it exists.

In conclusion, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea would be a better title if it was alliterative so Captain Haddock could shout it when he’s angry.

Yeah…I even bought the movie on DVD. I never watched it more than once or twice, though. There is nothing wrong with it (other than the “let’s demonstrate the 3d moments”), but there is also nothing about it I love enough to get gaga over. At the same time, though, I am an Asterix fan, Tintin never really grabbed me anyway. It’s not really my kind of humour I guess.

now 20.000 leagues under the sea on the other hand…love that movie! Can’t wait to see what you think about it.

Hopefully mini mouse is up and running again and won’t catching else anytime soon.

The film Tintin in many ways reminds me of the “Uncharted” series of video games. Both are world traipsing adventures in search of treasure filled with a colorful cast of characters and incredibly creative chase scenes. And both of them are done primarily with actors in mo-cap.

However, Uncharted doesn’t need to emulate the more cartoonish designs with their characters thus letting them look more realistic without having to stray into the Uncanny Valley. Which gives it the edge in this regard.
You know it’s a shame that these heavily mo-caped films like Avatar and Tintin just sort of disappear to the “I definitely saw that” part of our memories. But it could be worse. Could end up like “Mars Needs Moms.”

OMG. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?! Yes! That’s one of my all time favorites!

And yeah, I forgot. I was going to comment on your thoughts about Tintin’s personality. Yes, he is terribly nondescript (probably on purpose). And so perfect that when he occassionaly makes a mistake or can’t do something, I find it more hilarious and rewarding than I should. Yet again, it is hard to not like the guy. Curiousity, bravery, quick wits and willingness to help other are all admirable traits, after all. He is hardly everybody’s favorite character in the franchise though. Captain Haddock is probably more well-liked, because he’s a more colorful character.

When I saw “Black Panther,” I joked that Andy Serkis’s Ulysses Klaue was “Captain Haddock from the darkest timeline.” I had no idea Andy Serkis was an actual Captain Haddock actor/voice actor. I’ve got to see this movie bow.

You have to remember that “Tintin in Congo” was originally written in 1930, when the world was very different from now. Hergé himself was still young (only 23 years old) and naive, and he didn’t know a thing about Africans except for the prejudices of the the time. That said, Tintin is portrayed as being benevolent enough to the Congolese for belonging to that era. He cured a sick man’s fever, was a substitute teacher in a missionary school, solve disputes, and he would never really hurt anybody.

It is true that these days, most of the Africans in “Congo” come across as dated stereotypes. And it has gotten accusations of “racism” ever since the 1950s, when Hergé was still alive and lived on for several more years. But I don’t believe that it’s fair to call it “really racist”. It is rather a product of its time, that didn’t age too well as the years passed by. And I get that as an American, it might be hard for you to find even the better stories which came afterwards. But I suggest that you try, because I don’t find it fair that you should judge the whole franchinse based on “Congo” alone.

I’m sure Hergé was a perfectly nice guy who wrote with purely the best of intentions. I never actually said anything about him. My, admittedly possibly too glib, comment was a response to the comment in the review that Americans never read Tintin. I have seen Tintin books before, I am simply uninterested in them.

Patrick Ryan Ingram: That is true for most comics and cartoons until relatively recently though. That said, I have to say that the Nigerians in “The Red Sea Sharks” are drawn in a more modern realistic style.

I vaguely remember my grandma had one of the comics while I was growing up, and I also remember catching a few episodes of the animated series when I was little, so Tintin occupies that weird space in my memory of something I definitely remember being exposed to, but don’t remember much about it. I really need to get around to reading them now. Obviously the comic was visually appealing enough that I remember it all these years later.

As a huge Tintinophile, I was waiting years for this movie and enjoyed it heartily when it came out! That one-shot chase scene is stupendous and the animation works beautifully as you’ve pointed out. I’m still waiting with bated breath for the sequel, but we’ll see.

Who would you cast as Professor Calculus if they made a sequel featuring him?

Hi! Long time reader, first time commentator.
“I’d argue that Tintin, like Mario, is less a character in the conventional sense and more like a player avatar, a figure who provides an entry point into the story for the reader and is non-descript enough to allow them to be fully immersed in the adventure.”
Are you familiar with Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics? There’s a big section in there about cartoony designs facilitating reader identification with characters. He even mentions Tintin as an example of a stylistic technique common in Europe of using iconic figures contrasted against a more realistic background. “One set of lines to see. Another set of lines to be.”, in his words.
I wonder if that difference in styles is partially responsible for why European comics have had trouble over here in America. American comic books (as opposed to strips) tend to emphasize character design, and the traditionally dominant superhero genre is all about larger-than-life figures, rather than the worlds characters inhabit.

Glad to hear that Miss Mouse is not afflicted with the mumps and hopeful that she’ll be scampering around like a pinkie again in no time at all!

I’m a little sad to read that your love of TV Haddock sees Mr Serkis’ take on the character cast out like the scapegoat of old but pleased to see that you like the film nonetheless (I like the television series, I like the film and like the both just about equally well; when it comes to the choice between two delights I’m always willing to try for Option #3: BOTH PLEASE).

One would also like to say that Snowy was my very favourite thing about this film, despite facing serious challenges from everything else in it – I doubt the hairy little scene stealer has ever been better than he is here! (especially liked that scene where he makes Old Doberman roll over).

By the way, assuming Mr Spielberg’s connection to the creation of PRINCE OF EGYPT is anywhere near as significant as suggested, I’m fairly sure Old Scratch was left warming the bench when it came to lifting CGI Tintin up from out of the Uncanny Valley and into the Realms of High Art – which is probably for the best, since (as History & Theology teach us anything) The Almighty can LIFT.